I babysit twice a week at the Jazzercise studio I go to. It’s great social time for Kiddo, gets me out of the house, and it helps out other moms. I enjoy it a lot. Sure, there are nutso days when I am counting the minutes until class is over because I’m on the verge of pulling out my hair, but most of the time things go pretty smoothly and the chaos isn’t terrible.

There’s one “regular” who is giving me quite an education. She’s five, quite willful, but also quite sweet at times too. Likes to be in charge and is not happy when she’s not, but can also play extremely well with the younger girls. Needs emotional validation, but also needs tough love. Something I’m learning is that the tough love often doesn’t work without the validation. Like, I need to establish that I am the authority in the room, but in order for that to work best I also need her to feel like she can trust me. It’s a tricky dynamic to establish, and when it works, it works great. When it doesn’t…well, then we just get through the hour as best we can and we’ll try again next time.

Today was a good day. It started out rough. Five minutes into class she was following the boys around crying big crocodile tears and wailing “I have a question for youuuuuu! Why won’t you talk to meeeeee! You’re being meeeeean to meeeeeee!” Of course it was making me insane too, and I just wanted it to stop. It’s not a huge room, so one kid crying makes it feel like a dozen kids are crying.

Tough love wasn’t working. I’d tried telling her to leave the boys alone and find something else to do. All that did was a whole lot of nothing. So with a deep breath, I went for Plan B. If I was five and feeling left out and frustrated and didn’t know what to do with myself, what would I want an adult to do?

I beckoned her over to me with a kind voice. At first she didn’t want to come. “He won’t listen to meeeee!” she wailed, standing in the middle of the room.

“But I want to listen to you,” I said gently. “So come on over.”

Reluctantly, she did. I offered to fix her scarf that had come untied, and we talked while I arranged it around her neck. “I can see that you’re upset and having a tough time,” I said. “I understand. Look, there are a lot of other little girls here today. What’s something you could do with one of them?”

As I mentioned before, this one is willful. Everything has to be her idea. And she was having none of that. Okay, fine, I can’t force her. On to the next option.

“Okay, how about you come sit by me until you feel better then?”

Silently, she went and got her blanket and stuffed toy she always brings, came back, and laid down on the floor next to me. I let her be for a bit, and after a short while she was up and playing an imaginary fairy game with one of the younger girls, and proceeded to do so with almost no conflict for the remainder of class.

People. This was a miracle day. This does not happen every time. I do my best, but kids are kids. A lot of the time, I spend the hour merely refereeing the older kids while making sure the toddlers aren’t trying to climb up onto the table and eat the crayons. But once in a while, we strike gold. And those days? Are very, very good days.

Here’s why I love babysitting, and always have loved babysitting: It is excellent practice for parenting. I’m the one who learns. I’m learning how to remain in control, how to establish my authority while establishing friendships with kids, how to get to know different kids so I can figure out what works with each of them…there are endless lessons there. I’m going to spend my parenting years doing all of those things. And sometimes it’s going to get tiring. Sometimes it’s going to be tough. Sometimes I’m going to be on the verge of pulling out my hair and counting down the minutes until naptime. Sometimes I’m going to exhaust every method and idea I have and be at the end of my rope.

But I can do it. I can try one more thing. I can offer one more hug. I can dole out one more time-out. One situation at a time, one day at a time, one year at a time, I can do it.

My hair.

I like my  hair. It’s really dark – I’ve been told by more than one stylist that people pay a lot of money to have hair the color mine is naturally. My hair has some frizz to it and can be either curly/wavy or straight with the right products and styling techniques. So it’s versatile.

At least in some climates. Humidity? No way. The only surefire way for me to get a good hair day in humidity is to put a ton of anti-frizz serum in it, give it a really good blow-out, and then take a flat iron to it, strand by tiny strand.

But I’ve never been blessed with the kind of hair that looks good on camping trips. You know how some girls, when they go camping, can roll out of their sleeping bag, put their hair up in a ponytail, and look cute as a cheerleader? Yeah. That’s never been me. Somehow camping gives me the gnarliest cases of bedhead ever. Bedhead that can only be fixed by squashing it down under a bandanna. I have a few weird cowlicks that I can normally tame, but when I’m camping, they all stick straight up in the air and cannot be coaxed down.

I mention my hair because for the first time I can remember, I have gotten a haircut that I really truly hate. Despise. Abhor. I’ve had just-okay haircuts in the past, but never something I dislike as much as this.

What’s wrong, you ask?

It’s a Mom Haircut.

You know the type. When it looks like someone made a little hair helmet and set it on your head. Those of you who have seen me in person since the haircut will probably say it’s not that bad, but that’s because I’ve figured out how to finagle my hair into something a little more dimensional, and if I flat-iron the very bottom layers really well it loses some of the helmet look. Well, actually, the back of my hair is really cute. It’s the sides that look like a little helmet.

Serves me right for going to a stylist I’ve never met in desperation because my schedule and my regular stylist’s schedule just haven’t matched up.

Fortunately one of the benefits of being pregnant is my hair grows really fast, so it won’t be long before I can go crawling back to my regular stylist and beg her to fix it.

What about you? Any “hair raising” stories you’d like to share?

Pretty much my entire family loves Lemon Meringue Pie. My parents, my grandparents, my in-laws, my husband, my brothers, my sisters-in-law…actually, that’s everyone. I decided to get adventurous last Memorial Day and attempt one of these beauties. The attempt went well. The pie was devoured.

I made one for Christmas Eve this year, since it’s my Grandpa’s absolute favorite pie EVER, and a general hit.

So how do I make it?

First, get this book.

This book has saved my bacon on more than one occasion. I think every young bride needs one. It has a huge variety of recipes and is great for basics. It even teaches techniques.

Open it to this page.

Commence pie making!

This is a good, classic, pretty much foolproof Lemon Meringue recipe. When in doubt, I go with the classics.

A couple of things I’ve learned:

Frozen crust is a pain in the paskooniac. Just when you think it’s thawed enough to unroll into the pie dish, it’s still frozen in the middle, and it cracks. Then it cracks as the pie bakes and leaks filling under the crust. And that is not nice. So next time, homemade pie crust.

Alton Brown was right – dried beans make excellent pie weights.

The crust may have cracked on me, but not a single bubble formed when I blind-baked it before adding the filling. And I did not prick it with a fork. See, when you prick the crust, even if it doesn’t crack it still might leak. And that’s not a happy thing. So. Pie weights. Beans. Good thing.

There is no – absolutely no! – substitute for fresh lemon juice.

Or fresh lemon zest. But I don’t know how you would go about getting non-fresh lemon zest. Anyway. I’m at the point now where I will buy lemons as I need them for recipes instead of the little lemon-shaped bottles of juice, because it just tastes better. Except I need some kind of little lemon juicing device. Because hand-juicing enough lemons for what I need for that pie makes my hands cramp. Oh, and I always add just a touch more lemon zest than the recipe calls for. Folks I know like their Lemon Meringue on the tart side.

If all goes according to plan, THIS is what you will end up with:

This is right after I took the pie out of the oven. I always set my pies on a rack to cool, so they cool evenly.

Alas, the gorgeousness did not last! I think I needed to leave this pie in the oven for a few more minutes to set the meringue more, because as it cooled, that beautiful mound of white fluffiness deflated. Sad face.

Until next time, Lemon Meringue Pie!

Why yes, that title is on purpose.

I am having insane nesting urges right now. This did not really happen with my first pregnancy. I can remember maybe two times in the 3rd trimester? But with this baby, oh man, I want to turn the house upside down and completely reorganize the entire place! Husband and I have been talking about a couple of projects and are finally starting to make them into a reality.

And I am finally starting to use my Pinterest account. Amen.

The first was under the bathroom sink. The reason this post is not titled “Before and After” is because I do not have a “before” picture of this space. It was too embarrassing. Know what I mean?

Therefore, I give you The After:

That’s about all the storage space we have in our bathroom. The two small drawers on either side up top used to exist – the rails are there – but for reasons unknown the previous owners took the drawers out and nailed the fronts down. Don’t ask me why. But it’s a pain.

Anyway. I did that all by my little ol’ lonesome yesterday while Kiddo napped. Took all of about 30 minutes. I threw away a huge bag of empty bottles and ancient, now-gross things we’ll never use. The rest fit neatly into the plastic drawers or the two cute bins, with boxes of *ahem* my stuff lined up in the space between. Ahhhh. So much better!

Now, I give you The Before of the next project on my list:

This is our spices/oils/vinegar/various stuff cabinet. As you can see, it’s not terribly well organized. And it’s not the best use of space. We have a hard time knowing exactly what we have in there, and finding it. We’ve purchase duplicates before because we didn’t know we already had an item we needed for a recipe.

This is going to get fixed. Soon.

Little Tripp went to be with Jesus yesterday.

They call kids born with EB “butterfly kids” because their skin is as delicate as the wing of a butterfly. The butterfly is their symbol. And whenever one of these precious ones passes from this life, they say he or she “earned their wings”.

Butterflies mean a lot to my family, too. They were a favorite of my Aunt Nean, who passed away right before kiddo was born, and her daughter Erin, who passed away due to Cystic Fibrosis almost nine years ago. I try to wear either a butterfly or another piece of Aunt Nean’s jewelry for important family events.

As I sat on the sofa and cried for Tripp and his mom Courtney, I felt inspired to wear one of my butterfly necklaces today. Nobody around me in church probably thought twice about the little winged pendant hanging from my neck, but I knew what it was for. It was my own little tribute to Tripp. I never personally knew him or his mom, but their story reached out and grabbed me the first time I laid eyes on their blog. I’ll be lifting Courtney up in prayer for sure as she begins this next chapter of her life.

During worship today we sang a song with a line that says “I’m running to your arms…” and it was as if I could see little Tripp – he was running through the gates of Heaven, laughing, straight into the arms of Jesus. That is what Tripp is doing right now.

He is running. He is laughing. He is speaking. He is seeing.

And yes, as his mother does, I believe he is drumming.

I also believe with all my heart that when it comes Courtney’s time to pass through those gates herself, a chubby little figure will come running to her, arms outstretched, calling out “Mommy!” at the top of his lungs.

God bless you, Courtney. May you feel the prayers from everyone around the world who loves you.

Oh, and I asked God today if He would introduce Tripp to my Aunt Nean. She has the nicest soft, warm, motherly bosom for giving hugs to little ones, and the best laugh. Tripp will like her.

I’ve never been one to make big New Year’s resolutions and advertise them. And when I’ve made resolutions in the past, they’ve usually fizzled by sometime in February or March. Most of the time they had something to do with eating or exercise. Well, I’m pregnant at the start of 2012, so no resolutions there. All I want is a healthy pregnancy! So I eat what I eat in my weird way of eating, and exercise when I can (this has been a rather physically challenging pregnancy), and it’s all good.

So now what? Do I have a resolution this year?

Not so much a resolution as a shift in attitude.

For a while now I’ve been contemplating the kind of mom I want to be, the kind of example I want to set for my kids. And as I’m rapidly approaching the age of 30, I’ve also been reflecting on my life to this point. And I’ve come to a conclusion.

I don’t have time for BS any more.

Pardon the language. But that’s really the phrase that has stuck with this whole thing. If I’m going to raise a family, get a degree, start a career, work in my mom’s ministry, and whatever the heck else God has for me in life, I don’t have time to BS around anymore.

I spent most of my 20’s with an “Oh, I’ll do it later…” attitude towards life. I was young, I had time!

Well, it’s later now. It’s later. NOW.  As in, TODAY. Later has arrived, people! It’s knockin’ on the door! And it’s not going to go away if I try to ignore it!

No more “I’ll do it later” attitude for me or my family. No more putting things off with lame excuses. I gave my husband a really good butt-kicking on this subject the other night when he was contemplating not doing a class for his Masters degree this quarter. He asked what I thought, and I told him straight up I thought it was a bad idea to not do it and that none of his reasons were good enough to me. I told him “No more excuses for our family – are you gonna do it, or are you not?” Well, he’s doing it, and after his first session glued to his computer doing schoolwork he came out of his office and thanked me for not going easy on him.

I’m not going easy on myself either. I know I’m never going to be Superwoman and “do it all” – that’s an unreasonable goal. But I can do something. My goal this year is to get into college.

Let me rephrase that. I am going to get into college. I don’t know yet which one. I have a few phone calls to make. And I’m probably going to have a few tests to take. So this is going to take a while. I probably won’t update everyone on every single little detail, but I’ll update whenever there is anything worth updating.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m crazy to tackle going back to school when I’m going to have two little kids, and possibly more by the time I finish. But the fact that always overcomes those moments is “Why not now?” I’m 28. I’m young. I have very supportive family and friends. My kids are young – they’re probably not even going to remember most of this madness! So why not go for it now?

What about you? Later is now – what are you going to do?

Here’s a hospital visit for ya, Mom and Dad!

Yep, we spent the first few days of 2012 holed up in a hospital room with the two-year-old. We headed to the ER Sunday evening when what started as a runny nose turned into labored, rapid breathing and they admitted us when his oxygen levels were at only 83%. Tests for flu, pneumonia, and RSV all came back negative, so it seems it was just a nonspecific bronchial virus. He spent Sunday night and his nap on Monday on oxygen as the virus resolved, and then last night he slept with no oxygen at all and his levels stayed up on their own!

So now we’re home. Kiddo is taking a quick nap in his own crib, Daddy is getting ready to go to work for the afternoon, and I’m watching grownup TV instead of Over the Hedge or Ratatouille. Thank goodness. Because those are the only movies he wanted to watch while we were at the hospital.

Otherwise the holiday season was great for us! I’ll do a happy post for you soon. I promise.

Kiddo had Roseola last week.

For those of you who may not know, Roseola is a sneaky disease. It poses as possibly a dozen other things for days before your kid’s fever breaks and then this weird looking rash randomly appears on their body and they turn into a Cranky Monster.

It all started last Sunday night – we had kiddo’s birthday party at my parents’ house that afternoon, and a little after midnight he got suddenly and violently ill. By morning he was running a fever, and by the way he reacted when I tried to take his temperature with the ear thermometer I had a feeling it was an ear infection. We ended up at Urgent Care that night (for both of us – I’m dealing with strained rib ligaments and was in so much pain I was in tears and couldn’t lift my son) and he did indeed have inflammation in his ears. They gave us a prescription for antibiotics and told us to keep giving him Tylenol or Motrin as directed, and home we went.

Me? I got nuthin’. Because I’m pregnant and there are like, oh, five medications in the entire world that I can take. So basically I get to just ride this thing out. I’m better now – in way less pain. It’s just taking time and caution. I try to lift the kiddo as little as possible and I haven’t exercised in way too long.

Kiddo’s fever lasted for three days. It stayed above 100 the entire time unless he was on Tylenol, which he started refusing because the antibiotics tasted nasty, so he refused all medicine.

We visited our pediatrician three times during the week. The first to make sure he wasn’t getting dehydrated, since he was barely eating or drinking and vomiting quite a bit. He was fine, thankfully.

The second time, it was to get an antibiotic shot. He was throwing up every time we gave him the oral antibiotics, and what good is medicine if you’re not keeping it down? We hated getting him a shot, but we reasoned that getting it over and done with all at once was going to be better for him than having to hold him down and force medicine down his throat twice a day only to have him throw it back up immediately. He took the shot like a champ – cried but didn’t scream – and recovered just seconds after the nurse was done.

They also told us about these acetaminophen suppositories we could use on him since he wasn’t taking oral meds at all…and I will say nothing more about that except I have now done things as a parent I never imagined myself doing…

The fever broke sometime Wednesday night. He woke up Thursday happier but still tired and much crankier than his normal laid-back happy self. He ate and drank a little more and still slept a lot.

Friday, when I went to change his diaper after getting him out of bed, there was this weird hives-like rash all over his torso! It freaked me out. I wracked my brain for anything we had done differently that might cause him to have a reaction like that, but nothing came to mind. All his lotions and soaps and our laundry detergent are fragrance-free and dye-free, and he hadn’t had any different food. Besides, in the past when he’s had allergic reactions his eyelids always swell. Always. Without fail. And his eyes were normal.

Hence trip #3 to the pediatrician!

They all kept asking about allergies, but Husband did a little research before we went and it sure looked like Roseola. Sure enough, our pediatrician confirmed it. There is nothing we can do to treat the rash. It’s not itchy or anything, it’s just there. Just a sign that he had Roseola. It explains everything he was going through – like I said before, Roseola can look like a dozen different things in the days leading up to the fever breaking and the rash appearing.

So now my kid just looks like I washed his clothes in the worst laundry detergent ever. The rash is gone from his torso, but currently covering his arms and legs. And his butt. At least it’s not itchy or painful. Nothing aggravates it, nothing makes it go away. It just hangs out until it decides it’s ready to leave.

And let’s not forget about the crankiness.

Child was – to put it delicately – not himself for a few days after the fever broke. It was like a cranky alien had taken up residence in his body. The fits he threw during those days were so epic, I had no idea a 2 year old could harbor that kind of rage. Every little thing set him off. It was exhausting. I could not calm him down. All I could do was put him somewhere he couldn’t hurt himself and walk away until the screaming subsided. It was awful. We did discover that if we turned on a certain DVD of baby worship songs and plopped him down in the middle of the floor in front of the TV with his Blanky, he’d chill out pretty quick.

I am now soooooo tired of that DVD.

Every online forum we looked at of parents whose kids had been through Roseola said the same thing – the fever breaks, and the kid warps into a little monster for a few days. Then it subsides and they return to normal.

We finally had a mostly normal day this past Monday. He threw one epic fit in the morning but was happy the rest of the day. He is now 100% back to his regular self.

So. That’s Roseola for ya. At least once he’s had it, he’s pretty much immune.

Thank goodness. Because that wasn’t fun.

I know, I know, how have we gotten halfway into December and I haven’t posted anything yet??? I’ll do an overview post this week. That’s easier than doing one post for every item, isn’t it?

But I did consider one thing worth its own post!

For many months now, we have had an issue with The Cup Throwing. It took place at the end of every meal – as soon as we said “All done!” kiddo would pick up his cup and hurl it with great force to the floor. Not angrily, he’d just expressionlessly pick up his sippy cup and launch it into orbit. Milk or juice would get splattered on the floor. And on more than one occasion, my bare or sock-clad toes were the landing spot of the cup. Which is not fun.

We tried everything. Disciplining him, ignoring it, all we could think of.

Until I had a lightbulb moment.

My son is a creature of habit. He knows his routines, he loves his routines, he thrives in his routines. So why not make the handling of the cup part of the post-meal routine?

Here’s how it had been going: Say “All done”, throw the cup, remove leftover food from highchair tray, clean up splattered beverage, clean up child, remove him from highchair.

And here is what I changed: Say “All done”, hand the cup nicely to Mommy or Daddy, remove leftover food from highchair tray, clean up child, remove him from highchair.

Why had I not thought of this before???

It was not easy to institute. Day 1, when he threw the cup, I calmly picked it back up, put it back on his tray, and explained that we were not going to proceed until he handed his cup nicely to me. He threw it again. I picked it up and explained again. He threw it again. I picked it up and explained again. And on and on the dance went. He threw that darn cup around a dozen times before he handed it to me. And that was just at breakfast!

I knew I had to remain patient and consistent. It wasn’t easy. Some meals went better than others. Breakfast was the biggest battle at first. And he threw fits. And he would hit me. When that happened, he got a time-out in his highchair. I just push it over towards the wall and turn the chair around so he’s facing away from everything. Very effective. Then, after he calmed down and “apologized” (leans in for a hug – child is still not talking) we’d try again.

It took a few weeks – good days, bad days – but the past few days, he has handed his cup over immediately! Cue happy dance!

Toddlers are not easy in a lot of ways. There are times I don’t know what I’m going to do, and times I wonder if I’m even doing anything right. But at the end of the day, I know my kid. And if I know my kid, I must be doing my job.

A little bit of encouragement in the often maddening maze of parenting a toddler.

…decent family photo!

Seriously, do you know what a big deal this is??? We tried to get a family portrait last year. Kiddo was having none of THAT business. In every picture he was sucking his thumb with his face half-hidden in my shoulder.

But this. THIS is pure family memory gold.